Yesterday, Hizballah fired over 80 rockets into Israel, one of which killed two civilians in the city of Nahariya. Further disaster was narrowly avoided when one of the terrorist group’s attack drones exploded near a kindergarten in Haifa, from which children had been evacuated just in the nick of time. Iran’s Lebanese proxy thus continues to demonstrate that, battered though it may be, it can still do considerable damage, although it has not been able to carry out the overwhelming and devastating barrages that Israeli experts once feared.

Eran Ortal examines the progress of Israel’s Third Lebanon War, assessing that the IDF’s goal is not to encircle and destroy Hizballah’s military forces, but to destroy its infrastructure while avoiding combat. Ortal considers the merits of this approach:

Despite the inherent risks, the strategy of clearing a narrow buffer strip and ending the war in the north with an agreement is a legitimate choice. Hizballah’s southern army is a significant military threat capable of exacting a heavy price from the IDF. Hizballah knows full well that after a year of fighting in Gaza, the IDF is not the fresh, capable army, armed to the teeth and furious, that it was at the beginning of the war. It is very possible that the enemy will cooperate with the plan and take the chance of preserving its power over an attempt to restore its lost dignity. It is also possible that that is Iran’s directive.

The current strategy strives to shorten the long war we [Israelis] have fallen into. The thinking underlying this strategy is that the current Lebanon war will not be the last. As ever, Hizballah will prepare for the next war while learning from its failures in the current round. In the future, Israel will not be able to assume that a series of secret operations will provide it with the same benefits.

If Israel does find itself preparing for another round of conflict, Ortal goes on to argue, it must be ready for a military confrontation, not a counterterrorism operation.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.